Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
FRM
Examination
AIM
Statements
Readings
day-to-day activities.
a comprehensive examina-
management concepts
and approaches.
Concept.
Standard and non-standard forms of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)
Index models
Case studies
Risk Taking: A Corporate Governance Perspective, (International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group,
June 2012).
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
2.
Edwin J. Elton, Martin J. Gruber, Stephen J. Brown and William N. Goetzmann, Modern Portfolio Theory and
Investment Analysis, 8th Edition (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
3.
Noel Amenc and Veronique Le Sourd, Portfolio Theory and Performance Analysis (West Sussex, England:
John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
Chapter 4, Section 4.2 only .............................Applying the CAPM to Performance Measurement: Single-Index
Performance Measurement Indicators
4.
Anthony Tarantino and Deborah Cernauskas, Risk Management in Finance: Six Sigma and Other Next Generation
Techniques (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
5.
Steve Allen, Financial Risk Management: A Practitioners Guide to Managing Market and Credit Risk
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
6.
Ren Stulz, Risk Management Failures: What are They and When Do They Happen? Fisher College of Business
Working Paper Series, (Oct 2008).
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
7.
AIMS:
Risk Taking: A Corporate Governance Perspective, (International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group,
June 2012).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define risk, identify the classifications of risks, and explain the role played by risk in value creation.
Identify Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) approaches and explain how they address risk management in
Describe how the value of a risky asset or project can be estimated through the development of a risk-adjusted
an organization.
discount rate, how such a risk-adjusted discount rate can be created, and strengths and weaknesses of this
approach.
Describe problems which arise when using historical betas and equity risk premiums as inputs into a valuation model.
Construct a risk-adjusted discount rate for an asset or project and apply that rate to estimate the value of the
Describe the certainty equivalent approach to estimating value and contrast it with the use of a risk-adjusted
asset or project.
discount rate.
Identify the four steps in the AIRMIC risk management process and summarize the approach used in each step.
Identify the four risk treatment strategies a firm can use to manage its risks.
Compare and contrast the different types of probabilistic approaches used to estimate value and contrast
probabilistic approaches in general with risk-adjusted methods.
Define hedging, explain the tradeoff between the costs and benefits of hedging, and assess whether it is
appropriate for a firm to hedge in particular cases.
Identify financial products a firm can use to reduce or eliminate exposure to specific risks.
Identify the methods a firm can use to exploit risk better than its competitors, and explain how an organization
can create a culture of prudent risk-taking among its employees.
Identify examples of acceptable, desirable, and best practices in corporate risk governance.
Edwin J. Elton, Martin J. Gruber, Stephen J. Brown and William N. Goetzmann, Modern Portfolio Theory and
Investment Analysis, 8th Edition (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Chapter 5 ................................Delineating Efficient Portfolios
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain how covariance and correlation affect the expected return and volatility of a portfolio of risky assets.
Define the efficient frontier and describe the impact on it of various assumptions concerning short sales
and borrowing.
Personal taxes
Nonmarketable assets
Heterogeneous expectations
Non-price-taking behavior
Consumption-oriented CAPM
Multi-beta CAPM
Noel Amenc and Veronique Le Sourd, Portfolio Theory and Performance Analysis (West Sussex, England:
John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
Chapter 4, Section 4.2 only ...............................Applying the CAPM to Performance Measurement: Single-Index
Performance Measurement Indicators
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Calculate, compare, and evaluate the Treynor measure, the Sharpe measure, and Jensens alpha.
Compute and interpret tracking error, the information ratio, and the Sortino ratio.
Explain the Morningstar Rating System, VaR based, and management related risk-adjusted return measures.
Anthony Tarantino and Deborah Cernauskas, Risk Management in Finance: Six Sigma and Other Next Generation
Techniques (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Chapter 3 ................................Information Risk and Data Quality Management
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe ways in which a business can be negatively impacted by poor quality data.
Define operational data governance and differentiate between data quality inspection and data validation.
Differentiate between base level and complex metrics in creating data quality scores, and describe the three
different viewpoints by which complex data metrics can be reported.
Steve Allen, Financial Risk Management: A Practitioners Guide to Managing Market and Credit Risk
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
Chapter 4 ................................Financial Disasters
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the key factors that led to and the lessons learned from the following risk management case studies:
Kidder Peabody
Barings
Metallgesellschaft
Bankers Trust
Ren Stulz, Risk Management Failures: What are They and When Do They Happen? Fisher College of Business
Working Paper Series, (Oct 2008).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define the role of risk management and explain why a large financial loss is not necessarily a failure of risk
management.
Explain how a firm can fail to take known and unknown risks into account in making strategic decisions.
Describe how firms can fail to correctly monitor and manage risk on an ongoing basis.
Explain the role of risk metrics and describe the shortcomings of existing risk metrics.
Describe the responsibility of each GARP member with respect to professional integrity, ethical conduct, conflicts
of interest, confidentiality of information and adherence to generally accepted practices in risk management.
Interpreting and using regression coefficients, the t-statistic, and other output
Michael Miller, Mathematics and Statistics for Financial Risk Management (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012).
9.
10.
Chapter 2 .............................Probabilities
Chapter 4 .............................Distributions
James Stock and Mark Watson, Introduction to Econometrics, Brief Edition (Boston: Pearson Education, 2008).
Chapter 5 .............................Regression with a Single Regressor: Hypothesis Tests and Confidence Intervals
Philippe Jorion, Value-at-Risk:The New Benchmark for Managing Financial Risk, 3rd Edition.
(New York: McGraw Hill, 2007).
11.
John Hull, Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, 8th Edition (New York: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2012).
AIMS:
Michael Miller, Mathematics and Statistics for Financial Risk Management (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012).
Chapter 2 ................................Probabilities
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define and distinguish between the probability density function, the cumulative distribution function and the
inverse cumulative distribution function, and calculate probabilities based on each of these functions.
Define joint probability, describe a probability matrix and calculate joint probabilities using probability matrices.
Define and calculate a conditional probability, and distinguish between conditional and unconditional
probabilities.
Describe Bayes Theorem and apply this theorem in the calculation of conditional probabilities.
Define, calculate, and interpret the mean, standard deviation, and variance of a random variable.
Define, calculate, and interpret the covariance and correlation between two random variables.
Interpret and calculate the variance for a portfolio and understand the derivation of the minimum variance
hedge ratio.
Describe the four central moments of a statistical variable or distribution: mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis.
Interpret the skewness and kurtosis of a statistical distribution, and interpret the concepts of coskewness and
cokurtosis.
Chapter 4 ................................Distributions
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the key properties of the uniform distribution, Bernoulli distribution, Binomial distribution, Poisson
distribution, normal distribution and lognormal distribution, and identify common occurrences of each distribution.
Describe and apply the Central Limit Theorem and explain the conditions for the theorem.
Identify the key properties and parameters of the Chi-squared, Students t, and F-distributions.
Describe a mixture distribution and explain the creation and characteristics of mixture distributions.
Define, calculate and interpret the mean and variance of the sample mean.
Define and interpret the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis, and calculate the test statistics.
Differentiate between a one-tailed and a two-tailed test and explain the circumstances in which to use each test.
James Stock and Mark Watson, Introduction to Econometrics, Brief Edition (Boston: Pearson Education, 2008).
Chapter 4 ................................Linear Regression with One Regressor
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain how regression analysis in econometrics measures the relationship between dependent and
independent variables.
Define and interpret a population regression function, regression coefficients, parameters, slope and the intercept.
Define and interpret a sample regression function, regression coefficients, parameters, slope and the intercept.
Describe the method and three key assumptions of ordinary least squares (OLS) for estimation of parameters.
Describe the properties of OLS estimators and their sampling distributions, and explain the properties of
consistent estimators in general.
Define and interpret the explained sum of squares, the total sum of squares, the residual sum of squares,
the standard error of the regression (SER), and the regression R2.
Chapter 5 ................................Regression with a Single Regressor: Hypothesis Tests and Confidence Intervals
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain the Gauss-Markov Theorem and its limitations, and alternatives to the OLS.
Define, describe, apply, and interpret the t-statistic when the sample size is small.
Define, interpret, and describe methods for addressing omitted variable bias.
Explain the concept of imperfect and perfect multicollinearity and their implications.
Construct, perform, and interpret hypothesis tests and confidence intervals for a single coefficient in a multiple
regression.
Construct, perform, and interpret hypothesis tests and confidence intervals for multiple coefficients in a
multiple regression.
10
Philippe Jorion, Value-at-Risk: The New Benchmark for Managing Financial Risk, 3rd Edition.
(New York: McGraw Hill, 2007).
Chapter 12 ...............................Monte Carlo Methods
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe how to simulate a price path using a geometric Brownian motion model.
Describe how to simulate various distributions using the inverse transform method.
Explain how simulations can be used for computing VaR and pricing options.
Describe the relationship between the number of Monte Carlo replications and the standard error of the
estimated values.
John Hull, Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, 8th Edition (New York: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2012).
Chapter 22 ..............................Estimating Volatilities and Correlations
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain how historical data and various weighting schemes can be used in estimating volatility.
Describe the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) model for estimating volatility and its properties,
Describe the generalized auto regressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH(p,q)) model for estimating
Explain how the parameters of the GARCH(1,1) and the EWMA models are estimated using maximum
likelihood methods.
Describe how correlations and covariances are calculated, and explain the consistency condition for covariances.
11
Mechanics
Delivery options
Derivatives on fixed income securities, interest rates, foreign exchange, and equities
Commodity derivatives
Corporate bonds
Rating agencies
13.
Chapter 1 ..............................Introduction
Chapter 7 .............................Swaps
14.
Helyette Geman, Commodities and Commodity Derivatives: Modeling and Pricing for Agriculturals, Metals and
Energy (West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2005).
15.
Chapter 1.....................................Fundamentals of Commodity Spot and Futures Markets: Instruments, Exchanges and Strategies
Anthony Saunders and Marcia Millon Cornett, Financial Institutions Management: A Risk Management Approach,
7th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011).
16.
Frank Fabozzi (editor), The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities, 8th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012).
17.
Chapter 12 ............................Corporate Bonds, by Frank Fabozzi, Steven Mann and Adam Cohen
John B. Caouette, Edward I. Altman, Paul Narayanan, and Robert W.J. Nimmo, Managing Credit Risk, 2nd Edition
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
12
AIMS:
Hull, Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, 8th Edition.
Chapter 1 .................................Introduction
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the over-the-counter market, how it differs from trading on an exchange, and its advantages and disadvantages.
Describe, contrast, and calculate the payoffs from hedging strategies involving forward contracts and options.
Describe, contrast, and calculate the payoffs from speculative strategies involving futures and options.
Calculate an arbitrage payoff and describe how arbitrage opportunities are ephemeral.
Describe some of the risks that can arise from the use of derivatives.
Define and describe the key features of a futures contract, including the asset, the contract price and size,
delivery and limits.
Describe the rationale for margin requirements and explain how they work.
Describe the role of collateralization in the over-the-counter market and compare it to the margining system.
Identify and describe the differences between a normal and inverted futures market.
Describe the mechanics of the delivery process and contrast it with cash settlement.
Define and demonstrate an understanding of the impact of different order types, including: market, limit,
stop-loss, stop-limit, market-if-touched, discretionary, time-of-day, open, and fill-or-kill.
Define and differentiate between short and long hedges and identify appropriate uses.
Describe the arguments for and against hedging and the potential impact of hedging on firm profitability.
Define the basis and the various sources of basis risk, and explain how basis risks arise when hedging with futures.
Define cross hedging, and compute and interpret the minimum variance hedge ratio and hedge effectiveness.
Define, compute, and interpret the optimal number of futures contracts needed to hedge an exposure, and explain
and calculate the tailing the hedge adjustment.
Explain how to use stock index futures contracts to change a stock portfolios beta.
Describe what is meant by rolling the hedge forward and describe some of the risks that arise from such
a strategy.
13
Describe Treasury Rates, LIBOR, Repo Rates, and what is meant by the risk-free rate.
Calculate the value of an investment using daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannual, annual, and continuous
compounding. Convert rates based on different compounding frequencies.
Calculate the theoretical price of a coupon paying bond using spot rates.
Calculate the value of the cash flows from a forward rate agreement (FRA).
Describe the limitations of duration and how convexity addresses some of them.
Calculate the change in a bonds price given duration, convexity, and a change in interest rates.
Describe the differences between forward and futures contracts and explain the relationship between forward
and spot prices.
Calculate the forward price, given the underlying assets price, with or without short sales and/or consideration to
the income or yield of the underlying asset. Describe an arbitrage argument in support of these prices.
Calculate a forward foreign exchange rate using the interest rate parity relationship.
Calculate the futures price on commodities incorporating income/storage costs and/or convenience yields.
Define and calculate, using the cost-of-carry model, forward prices where the underlying asset either does or
does not have interim cash flows.
Describe the various delivery options available in the futures markets and how they can influence futures prices.
Assess the relationship between current futures prices and expected future spot prices, including the impact of
systematic and nonsystematic risk.
Define contango and backwardation, interpret the effect contango or backwardation may have on the relationship
between commodity futures and spot prices, and relate the cost-of-carry model to contango and backwardation.
Identify the most commonly used day count conventions, describe the markets that each one is typically used in,
and apply each to an interest calculation.
Calculate the conversion of a discount rate to a price for a U.S. Treasury bill.
Differentiate between the clean and dirty price for a U.S. Treasury bond; calculate the accrued interest and dirty
price on a U.S. Treasury bond.
14
Explain and calculate a U.S. Treasury bond futures contract conversion factor.
Calculate the cost of delivering a bond into a Treasury bond futures contract.
Describe the impact of the level and shape of the yield curve on the cheapest-to-deliver bond decision.
Calculate the theoretical futures price for a Treasury bond futures contract.
Explain how Eurodollar futures can be used to extend the LIBOR zero curve.
Calculate the duration-based hedge ratio and describe a duration-based hedging strategy using interest
rate futures.
Chapter 7 ................................Swaps
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain the mechanics of a plain vanilla interest rate swap and compute its cash flows.
Explain how a plain vanilla interest rate swap can be used to transform an asset or a liability and calculate the
resulting cash flows.
Describe the comparative advantage argument for the existence of interest rate swaps and explain some of
the criticisms of this argument.
Explain how the discount rates in a plain vanilla interest rate swap are computed.
Calculate the value of a plain vanilla interest rate swap based on two simultaneous bond positions.
Calculate the value of a plain vanilla interest rate swap from a sequence of forward rate agreements (FRAs).
Explain the mechanics of a currency swap and compute its cash flows.
Describe the comparative advantage argument for the existence of currency swaps.
Explain how a currency swap can be used to transform an asset or liability and calculate the resulting cash flows.
Calculate the value of a currency swap based on two simultaneous bond positions.
Identify and describe other types of swaps, including commodity, volatility and exotic swaps.
Identify the six factors that affect an options price and describe how these six factors affect the price for both
European and American options.
Identify, interpret and compute upper and lower bounds for option prices.
Explain put-call parity and calculate, using the put-call parity on a non-dividend-paying stock, the value of a
European and American option, respectively.
Explain the early exercise features of American call and put options on a non-dividend-paying stock and the price
effect early exercise may have.
Explain the effects of dividends on the put-call parity, the bounds of put and call option prices, and the early
exercise feature of American options.
15
Describe and explain the use and payoff functions of combination strategies, including straddles, strangles, strips,
and straps.
Define commodity terminology such as storage costs, carry markets, lease rate, and convenience yield.
Describe an arbitrage transaction in commodity forwards, and compute the potential arbitrage profit.
Define the lease rate and explain how it determines the no-arbitrage values for commodity forwards and futures.
Define carry markets, and explain the impact of storage costs and convenience yields on commodity forward
prices and no-arbitrage bounds.
Identify factors that impact gold, corn, electricity, natural gas, and oil forward prices.
Explain how basis risk can occur when hedging commodity price exposure.
Evaluate the differences between a strip hedge and a stack hedge and explain how these differences impact
Describe examples of cross-hedging, specifically the process of hedging jet fuel with crude oil and using weather
Explain how to create a synthetic commodity position, and use it to explain the relationship between the forward
risk management.
derivatives.
price and the expected future spot price.
16
Helyette Geman, Commodities and Commodity Derivatives: Modeling and Pricing for Agriculturals, Metals and
Energy (West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2005).
Chapter 1 .................................Fundamentals of Commodity Spot and Futures Markets: Instruments, Exchanges
and Strategies
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain the major differences between spot, forward, and futures transactions, markets, and contracts.
Describe the basic characteristics and differences between hedgers, speculators, and arbitrageurs.
Describe an arbitrage portfolio and explain the conditions for a market to be arbitrage-free.
Identify a commonly used measure for determining the effectiveness of hedging a spot position with a futures
contract, and compute and compare the effectiveness of alternative hedges using this measure.
Define and differentiate between an Exchange for Physical agreement and an Alternative Delivery Procedure.
Describe volume and open interest and how they relate to liquidity and market depth.
Anthony Saunders and Marcia Millon Cornett, Financial Institutions Management: A Risk Management Approach,
7th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011).
Chapter 14...............................Foreign Exchange Risk
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain how a financial institution could alter its net position exposure to reduce foreign exchange risk.
Calculate a financial institutions potential dollar gain or loss exposure to a particular currency.
Identify and describe the different types of foreign exchange trading activities.
Calculate the potential gain or loss from a foreign currency denominated investment.
Describe how a non-arbitrage assumption in the foreign exchange markets leads to the interest rate parity
theorem, and use this theorem to calculate forward foreign exchange rates.
Explain why diversification in multicurrency asset-liability positions could reduce portfolio risk.
17
Frank Fabozzi, The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities, 8th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012).
Chapter 12 ...............................Corporate Bonds, by Frank Fabozzi, Steven Mann and Adam Cohen
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe a bond indenture and explain the role of the corporate trustee in a bond indenture.
Describe zero-coupon bonds, the relationship between original-issue-discount and reinvestment risk, and the
treatment of zeroes in bankruptcy.
Describe the various security types relevant for corporate bonds, including:
Mortgage bonds
Guaranteed bonds
Describe the mechanisms by which corporate bonds can be retired before maturity, including call provisions,
sinking-fund provisions, maintenance and replacement funds, and tender offers.
Describe and differentiate between credit default risk and credit spread risk.
Describe event risk and explain what may cause it in corporate bonds.
Define high-yield bonds, and describe types of high-yield bond issuers and some of the payment features peculiar
to high yield bonds.
Define and differentiate between an issuer default rate and a dollar default rate.
Define recovery rates and describe the relationship between recovery rates and seniority.
John B. Caouette, Edward I. Altman, Paul Narayanan, and Robert W.J. Nimmo, Managing Credit Risk, 2nd Edition
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Chapter 6 ................................The Rating Agencies
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain market and regulatory forces that have played a role in the growth of the rating agencies.
Describe a rating scale, define credit outlooks, and explain the difference between solicited and unsolicited ratings.
Describe Standard and Poors and Moodys rating scales and distinguish between investment and noninvestment
grade ratings.
Describe the difference between an issuer-pay and a subscriber-pay model and describe concerns regarding the
issuer-pay model.
Describe and contrast the process for rating industrial and sovereign debt and describe how the distributions of
these ratings may differ.
Describe the relationship between the rating agencies and regulators and identify key regulations that impact the
rating agencies and the use of ratings in the market.
Describe some of the trends and issues emerging from the current credit crisis relevant to the rating agencies and
the use of ratings in the market.
18
Value-at-Risk (VaR)
Volatility Models
Option valuation
The Greeks
Fundamental analysis
Operational risk
Linda Allen, Jacob Boudoukh and Anthony Saunders, Understanding Market, Credit and Operational Risk:
The Value at Risk Approach (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
19.
19
20.
21.
Bruce Tuckman, Fixed Income Securities, 3rd Edition (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
Caouette, Altman, Narayanan, and Nimmo, Managing Credit Risk, 2nd Edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
22.
Arnaud de Servigny and Olivier Renault, Measuring and Managing Credit Risk (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004).
23.
24.
Kevin Dowd, Measuring Market Risk, 2nd Edition (West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2005).
Jorion, Value-at-Risk: The New Benchmark for Managing Financial Risk, 3rd Edition.
27.
John Hull, Risk Management and Financial Institutions, 2nd Edition (Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2010).
26.
Michael Ong, Internal Credit Risk Models: Capital Allocation and Performance Measurement (London: Risk Books, 2003).
25.
Principles for Sound Stress Testing Practices and Supervision (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
Publication, May 2009).
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
20
AIMS:
Linda Allen, Jacob Boudoukh and Anthony Saunders, Understanding Market, Credit and Operational Risk:
The Value at Risk Approach (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
Chapter 2 ................................Quantifying Volatility in VaR Models
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain how asset return distributions tend to deviate from the normal distribution.
Explain potential reasons for the existence of fat tails in a return distribution and describe the implications fat tails
have on analysis of return distributions.
Compare, contrast and calculate parametric and non-parametric approaches for estimating conditional volatility,
including:
Exponential smoothing
GARCH approach
Historic simulation
Hybrid methods
Explain the process of return aggregation in the context of volatility forecasting methods.
Explain long horizon volatility/VaR and the process of mean reversion according to an AR(1) model.
Explain structural Monte Carlo, stress testing and scenario analysis methods for computing VaR, identifying
strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
21
Calculate the value of a European call or put option using the one-step and two-step binomial model.
Calculate the value of an American call or put option using a two-step binomial model.
Describe how the binomial model value converges as time periods are added.
Explain how the binomial model can be altered to price options on: stocks with dividends, stock indices,
currencies, and futures.
Explain the lognormal property of stock prices, the distribution of rates of return, and the calculation of
expected return.
List and describe the assumptions underlying the Black-Scholes-Merton option pricing model.
Compute the value of a European option using the Black-Scholes-Merton model on a non dividend paying stock.
Define implied volatilities and describe how to compute implied volatilities from market prices of options using
the Black-Scholes-Merton model.
Explain how dividends affect the early decision for American call and put options.
Compute the value of a European option using the Black-Scholes-Merton model on a dividend paying stock.
Use Blacks Approximation to compute the value of an American call option on a dividend-paying stock.
Describe and assess the risks associated with naked and covered option positions.
Explain how naked and covered option positions generate a stop loss trading strategy.
Define and describe theta, gamma, vega, and rho for option positions.
Describe how hedging activities take place in practice, and describe how scenario analysis can be used to
formulate expected gains and losses with option positions.
22
Describe how portfolio insurance can be created through option instruments and stock index futures.
Bruce Tuckman, Fixed Income Securities, 3rd Edition (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
Chapter 1 .................................Prices, Discount Factors, and Arbitrage
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define discount factor and use a discount function to compute present and future values.
Define the law of one price, explain it using an arbitrage argument, and describe how it can be applied to
bond pricing.
Identify the components of a U.S. Treasury coupon bond, and compare and contrast the structure to Treasury
STRIPS, including the difference between P-STRIPS and C-STRIPS.
Construct a replicating portfolio using multiple fixed income securities to match the cash flows of a given fixed
Identify arbitrage opportunities for fixed income securities with certain cash flows.
Differentiate between clean and dirty bond pricing and explain the implications of accrued interest with
income security.
Calculate and describe the impact of different compounding frequencies on a bonds value.
Define and interpret the forward rate, and compute forward rates given spot rates.
Define par rate and describe the equation for the par rate of a bond.
Assess the impact of maturity on the price of a bond and the returns generated by bonds.
Define the flattening and steepening of rate curves and construct a hypothetical trade to reflect expectations
that a curve will flatten or steepen.
Distinguish between gross and net realized returns, and calculate the realized return for a bond over a holding
Define and interpret the spread of a bond, and explain how a spread is derived from a bond price and a term
Define the coupon effect and explain the relationship between coupon rate, YTM, and bond prices.
Explain the decomposition of P&L for a bond into separate factors including carry roll-down, rate change and
spread change effects.
Identify the most common assumptions in carry roll-down scenarios, including realized forwards, unchanged term
structure, and unchanged yields.
23
Describe an interest rate factor and identify common examples of interest rate factors.
Define and compute the DV01 of a fixed income security given a change in yield and the resulting change in price.
Calculate the face amount of bonds required to hedge an option position given the DV01 of each.
Define, compute, and interpret the effective duration of a fixed income security given a change in yield and the
resulting change in price.
Compare and contrast DV01 and effective duration as measures of price sensitivity.
Define, compute, and interpret the convexity of a fixed income security given a change in yield and the resulting
change in price.
Explain the process of calculating the effective duration and convexity of a portfolio of fixed income securities.
Explain the impact of negative convexity on the hedging of fixed income securities.
Construct a barbell portfolio to match the cost and duration of a given bullet investment, and explain the
advantages and disadvantages of bullet versus barbell portfolios.
Describe and assess the major weakness attributable to single-factor approaches when hedging portfolios or
implementing asset liability techniques.
Define key rate exposures and know the characteristics of key rate exposure factors including partial 01s and
forward-bucket 01s.
Define, calculate, and interpret key rate 01 and key rate duration.
Describe the key rate exposure technique in multi-factor hedging applications and summarize its advantages
and disadvantages.
Calculate the key rate exposures for a given security, and compute the appropriate hedging positions given a
specific key rate exposure profile.
Describe the relationship between key rates, partial '01s and forward-bucket 01s, and calculate the forwardbucket 01 for a shift in rates in one or more buckets.
Construct an appropriate hedge for a position across its entire range of forward bucket exposures.
Explain how key rate and multi-factor analysis may be applied in estimating portfolio volatility.
24
Describe a regression hedge and explain how it improves on a standard DV01-neutral hedge.
Calculate the face value of an offsetting position needed to carry out a regression hedge.
Calculate the face value of multiple offsetting swap positions needed to carry out a two-variable regression hedge.
Describe principal component analysis and explain how it is applied in constructing a hedging portfolio.
Caouette, Altman, Narayanan, and Nimmo, Managing Credit Risk, 2nd Edition. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Chapter 23 ..............................Country Risk Models
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define and differentiate between country risk and transfer risk and describe some of the factors that might lead
to each.
Identify and describe some of the major risk factors that are relevant for sovereign risk analysis.
Compare and contrast corporate and sovereign historical default rate patterns.
Describe how country risk ratings are used in lending and investment decisions.
Arnaud de Servigny and Olivier Renault, Measuring and Managing Credit Risk (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004).
Chapter 2 ................................External and Internal Ratings
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe external rating scales, the rating process, and the link between ratings and default.
Describe the impact of time horizon, economic cycle, industry, and geography on external ratings.
Review the results and explanation of the impact of ratings changes on bond and stock prices.
Explain and compare the through-the-cycle and at-the-point internal ratings approaches.
Describe the process for and issues with building, calibrating and backtesting an internal rating system.
Identify and describe the biases that may affect a rating system.
Michael Ong, Internal Credit Risk Models: Capital Allocation and Performance Measurement
(London: Risk Books, 2003).
Chapter 4 ................................Loan Portfolios and Expected Loss
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the objectives of measuring credit risk for a banks loan portfolio.
Define, calculate and interpret the expected loss for an individual credit instrument.
Explain how a credit downgrade or loan default affects the return of a loan.
Define usage given default and how it impacts expected and unexpected loss.
Describe the process of parameterizing credit risk models and its challenges.
25
Explain the objective for quantifying both expected and unexpected loss.
Explain the relationship between economic capital, expected loss and unexpected loss.
Kevin Dowd, Measuring Market Risk, 2nd Edition (West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2005).
Chapter 2 ................................Measures of Financial Risk
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain the limitations of the mean-variance framework with respect to assumptions about the return distributions.
Define the Value-at-Risk (VaR) measure of risk, describe assumptions about return distributions and holding
period, and explain the limitations of VaR.
Define the properties of a coherent risk measure and explain the meaning of each property.
Explain and calculate expected shortfall (ES), and compare and contrast VaR and ES.
Describe spectral risk measures, and explain how VaR and ES are special cases of spectral risk measures.
Describe how the results of scenario analysis can be interpreted as coherent risk measures.
John Hull, Risk Management and Financial Institutions, 2nd Edition (Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2010).
Chapter 18 ...............................Operational Risk
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Calculate the regulatory capital using the basic indicator approach and the standardised approach.
Explain the Basel Committees requirements for the advanced measurement approach (AMA) and their seven
Explain how to get a loss distribution from the loss frequency distribution and the loss severity distribution using
Describe the common data issues that can introduce inaccuracies and biases in the estimation of loss frequency
and severity distributions.
Describe how to use scenario analysis in instances when there is scarce data.
Describe how to identify causal relationships and how to use risk and control self assessment (RCSA) and
key risk indicators (KRIs) to measure and manage operational risks.
26
Describe the allocation of operational risk capital and the use of scorecards.
Explain the risks of moral hazard and adverse selection when using insurance to mitigate operational risks.
Jorion, Value-at-Risk: The New Benchmark for Managing Financial Risk, 3rd Edition.
Chapter 14...............................Stress Testing
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the purposes of stress testing and the process of implementing a stress testing scenario.
Describe the Standard Portfolio Analysis of Risk (SPAN) system for measuring portfolio risk.
Define and distinguish between sensitivity analysis and stress testing model parameters.
Explain how the results of a stress test can be used to improve our risk analysis and risk management systems.
Principles for Sound Stress Testing Practices and Supervision (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
Publication, May 2009).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the rationale for the use of stress testing as a risk management tool.
Describe weaknesses identified and recommendations for improvement in:
27
Risk-neutral pricing
VaR mapping
Backtesting VaR
Exotic options
29.
30.
Chapter 8 .............................The Evolution of Short Rates and the Shape of the Term Structure
Pietro Veronesi, Fixed Income Securities (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010).
31.
Jorion, Value-at-Risk: The New Benchmark for Managing Financial Risk, 3rd Edition.
29
32.
33.
Frank Fabozzi, Anand Bhattacharya, William Berliner, Mortgage-Backed Securities, 3rd Edition
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
34.
Messages from the Academic Literature on Risk Measurement for the Trading Book, Basel Committee on
Banking Supervision, Working Paper, No. 19, Jan 2011.
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
AIMS:
Hull, Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, 8th Edition.
Chapter 19...............................Volatility Smiles
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain how put-call parity indicates that the implied volatility used to price call options is the same used to price
put options.
Compare the shape of the volatility smile (or skew) to the shape of the implied distribution of the underlying asset
price and to the pricing of options on the underlying asset.
Explain why foreign exchange rates are not necessarily lognormally distributed and the implications this can have
on option prices and implied volatility.
Describe the volatility smile for equity options and give possible explanations for its shape.
Describe volatility term structures and volatility surfaces and how they may be used to price options.
Explain the impact of the volatility smile on the calculation of the Greeks.
Describe some of the factors that drive the development of exotic products.
Identify and describe how various option characteristics can transform standard American options into
nonstandard American options.
30
Compound options
Binary options
Lookback options
Shout options
Asian options
Exchange options
Rainbow options
Basket options
Explain the basic premise of static option replication and how it can be applied to hedging exotic options.
Calculate the expected discounted value of a zero-coupon security using a binomial tree.
Construct and apply an arbitrage argument to price a call option on a zero-coupon security using replicating
portfolios.
Explain why a call option on a zero-coupon security cannot be properly priced using expected discounted values.
Explain the role of up-state and down-state probabilities in the valuation of a call option on a zero-coupon security
Explain the difference between true and risk-neutral probabilities, and apply this difference to interest rate drift.
Explain how the principles of arbitrage pricing of derivatives on fixed income securities can be extended over
multiple periods.
Describe the rationale behind the use of non-recombining trees in option pricing.
Calculate the value of a constant maturity Treasury swap, given an interest rate tree and the riskneutral probabilities.
Describe the advantages and disadvantages of reducing the size of the time steps on the pricing of derivatives on
fixed income securities.
Explain why the BlackScholesMerton model used in valuing equity derivatives is not appropriate to value
derivatives on fixed income securities.
Describe the impact of embedded options on the value of fixed income securities.
Chapter 8 ................................The Evolution of Short Rates and the Shape of the Term Structure
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain the role of interest rate expectations in determining the shape of the term structure.
Apply a risk-neutral interest rate tree to assess the effect of volatility on the shape of the term structure.
Calculate the price and return of a zero coupon bond incorporating a risk premium.
31
Describe the process and effectiveness of the following models, and construct a tree for a short-term rate using
the following models:
Calculate the short-term rate change and standard deviation of the change of the rate using a model with
normally distributed rates and no drift.
Describe methods for handling negative short-term rates for term structure models.
Describe the process of and construct a tree for a short-term rate under the Ho-Lee Model with timedependent drift.
Describe uses and benefits of the arbitrage-free models and assess the issue of fitting models to market prices.
Describe the process of and construct a simple and recombining tree for a short-term rate under the Vasicek
Model with mean reversion.
Calculate the Vasicek Model rate change, standard deviation of the change of the rate, expected rate in T years,
and half life.
Describe the short-term rate process under a model with time-dependent volatility (Model 3).
Calculate the short-term rate change and describe the behavior of the standard deviation of the change of the
rate using a model with time dependent volatility.
Describe the short-term rate process under the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (CIR) and Lognormal models.
Calculate the short-term rate change and describe the basis point volatility using the CIR and Lognormal models.
Summarize the application of a lognormal model with deterministic drift and a lognormal model with
mean reversion.
Pietro Veronesi, Fixed Income Securities (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010).
Chapter 8 ................................Basics of Residential Mortgage Backed Securities
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Differentiate between agency and non-agency MBS and describe the major participants in the residential
MBS market.
Describe the mortgage prepayment option and the factors that influence prepayments.
Describe the impact on a MBS of the weighted average maturity, the weighted average coupon, and the speed of
prepayments of the mortgages underlying the MBS.
Describe the effective duration and effective convexity of standard MBS instruments and the factors that affect them.
Describe collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) and contrast them with MBSs.
32
Describe and work through a simple cash flow example for the following types of MBS:
Pass-through securities
Jorion, Value-at-Risk: The New Benchmark for Managing Financial Risk, 3rd Edition.
Chapter 6 ................................Backtesting VaR
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define backtesting and exceptions and explain the importance of backtesting VaR models.
Explain the framework of backtesting models with the use of exceptions or failure rates.
Explain the principles underlying VaR Mapping, list and describe the mapping process.
Explain how the mapping process captures general and specific risks.
List and describe the three methods of mapping portfolios of fixed income securities.
Describe the method of mapping forwards, commodity forwards, forward rate agreements, and interest rate swaps.
Calculate VaR using a parametric estimation approach assuming that the return distribution is either normal
or lognormal.
Describe the method of estimating standard errors for estimators of coherent risk measures.
Describe the bootstrap historical simulation approach to estimating coherent risk measures.
33
Explain the importance and challenges of extreme values for risk management.
Describe extreme value theory (EVT) and its use in risk management.
Explain the tradeoffs in setting the threshold level when applying the GP distribution.
Compute VaR and expected shortfall using the POT approach, given various parameter values.
Frank Fabozzi, Anand Bhattacharya, William Berliner, Mortgage-Backed Securities, 3rd Edition
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
Chapter 1 .................................Overview of Mortgages and the Consumer Mortgage Market
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Understand the allocation of loan principal and interest over time for various loan types.
Define prepayment risk, reasons for prepayment, and the negative convexity of mortgages.
Explain credit and default risk analysis of mortgages, including metrics for delinquencies, defaults, and loss severity.
Explain the creation of agency (fixed rate and adjustable rate) and private-label MBS pools, pass-throughs, CMOs,
and mortgage strips.
34
Describe MBS market structure and the ways that fixed rate pass-through securities trade.
Explain a dollar roll transaction, how to value a dollar roll, and what factors can cause a roll to trade special.
Calculate the static cash flow yield of a MBS using bond equivalent yield (BEY) and determine the associated
nominal spread.
Describe the steps in valuing a mortgage security using Monte Carlo methodology.
Define and interpret option-adjusted spread (OAS), zero-volatility OAS, and option cost.
Explain how to select the number of interest rate paths in Monte Carlo analysis.
Describe total return analysis, calculate total return, and understand factors present in more sophisticated models.
Identify limitations of the nominal spread, Z-spread, OAS, and total return measures.
Messages from the Academic Literature on Risk Measurement for the Trading Book, Basel Committee on
Banking Supervision, Working Paper, No. 19, Jan 2011.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain the following lessons on VaR implementation: time horizon over which VaR is estimated, the recognition
of time varying volatility in VaR risk factors, and VaR backtesting.
Describe exogenous and endogenous liquidity risk and explain how they might be integrated into VaR models
including adjusting the VaR time horizon.
Assess VaR, Expected Shortfall, Spectral, and other identified risk measures.
Assess the results of research on top-down and bottom-up risk aggregation methods.
Explain intermediary balance sheet management and the cyclical feedback loop from VaR constraints on
leveraged investors.
35
Counterparty risk
Mitigation techniques
Credit derivatives
Valuation
Spread curves
Default risk
Quantitative methodologies
Credit VaR
Adam Ashcroft and Til Schuermann, Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit, Federal
Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, No. 318 (March 2008).
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
36.
Christopher Culp, Structured Finance and Insurance: The Art of Managing Capital and Risk
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006).
37.
Chapter 16............................Securitization
38.
36
Allan Malz, Financial Risk Management: Models, History, and Institutions (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
39.
Jon Gregory, Counterparty Credit Risk: The New Challenge for Global Financial Markets
(West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2010).
40.
Ren Stulz, Risk Management & Derivatives ((Florence, KY: Thomson South-Western, 2002).
AIMS:
Adam Ashcroft and Til Schuermann, Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit, Federal
Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 318, (March 2008).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain the subprime mortgage credit securitization process in the United States.
Identify and describe key frictions in subprime mortgage securitization, and assess the relative contribution of
each factor to the subprime mortgage problems.
Describe the characteristics of the subprime mortgage market, including the creditworthiness of the typical
borrower and the features and performance of a subprime loan.
Explain the structure of the securitization process of the subprime mortgage loans.
Describe the credit ratings process with respect to subprime mortgage backed securities.
Explain the implications of credit ratings on the emergence of subprime related mortgage backed securities.
Describe the relationship between the credit ratings cycle and the housing cycle.
Explain the implications of the subprime mortgage meltdown on the management of portfolios.
Christopher Culp, Structured Finance and Insurance: The Art of Managing Capital and Risk
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006).
Chapter 12 ...............................Credit Derivatives and Credit-Linked Notes
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the mechanics of a single named credit default swap (CDS), and describe particular aspects of CDSs
such as settlement methods, payments to the protection seller, reference name, ownership, recovery rights,
trigger events, accrued interest and liquidity.
Describe portfolio credit default swaps, including basket CDS, Nth to Default CDS, Senior and Subordinated
Basket CDS.
Explain the mechanics of asset default swaps, equity default swaps, total return swaps and credit linked notes.
37
Describe the objectives of structured finance and explain the motivations for asset securitization.
Describe the role of structured finance in venture capital formation, risk transfer, agency cost reduction, and
satisfaction of specific investor demands.
Explain the steps involved and the various players in a structuring process.
Define and describe the process of tranching and subordination, and describe the role of loss distributions and
credit ratings.
Chapter 16...............................Securitization
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define securitization and describe the process and the role the participants play.
Analyze the differences in the mechanics of issuing securitized products using a trust vs. special purpose entity.
Describe the various types of internal and external credit enhancements and interpret a simple numerical example.
Explain the impact liquidity, interest rate and currency risk has on a securitized structure, and list securities that
Describe the securitization process for mortgage backed securities and asset backed commercial paper.
Define collateralized debt obligations (CDO) and describe the motivations of CDO buyers and sellers.
Define and explain the structure of balance sheet CDOs and arbitrage CDOs.
Describe the benefits of and motivations for balance sheet CDOs and arbitrage CDOs.
Describe the Merton model for corporate security pricing, including its assumptions, strengths and weaknesses:
Using the Merton model, calculate the value of a firms debt and equity and the volatility of firm value
Describe the results and practical implications of empirical studies that use the Merton model to value debt
Describe the Moodys KMV Credit Monitor Model to estimate probability of default using equity prices, and
compare the Moodys KMV equity model with the Merton model.
Describe credit scoring models and the requisite qualities of accuracy, parsimony, non-triviality, feasibility,
transparency and interpretability.
38
Define and differentiate among the following quantitative methodologies for credit analysis and scoring:
Parametric discrimination
Define and differentiate the following decision rules: minimum error, minimum risk, Neyman-Pearson and Minimax.
Identify the problems and tradeoffs between classification and prediction models of performance.
Allan Malz, Financial Risk Management: Models, History, and Institutions (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
Chapter 6 ................................Credit and Counterparty Risk
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe securities with different types of credit risks, such as corporate debt, sovereign debt, credit derivatives,
and structured products.
Differentiate between book and market values for a firms capital structure.
Identify and describe different debt seniorities and their respective collateral structure.
Describe common frictions that arise during the creation of credit contracts.
Define the following terms related to default and recovery: default events, probability of default, credit exposure,
Calculate expected loss from recovery rates, the loss given default, and the probability of default.
Differentiate between a credit risk event and a market risk event for marketable securities.
Summarize credit assessment techniques such as credit ratings and rating migrations, internal ratings, and
risk models.
Define counterparty risk, describe its different aspects and explain how it is mitigated.
Describe the Merton Model, and use it to calculate the value of a firm, the values of a firms debt and equity, and
Explain the drawbacks and assess possible improvements to the Merton Model, and identify proprietary models
default probabilities.
of rating agencies that attempt to address these issues.
39
Define the different ways of representing spreads. Compare and differentiate between the different spread
conventions and compute one spread given others when possible.
Explain how default risk for a single company can be modeled as a Bernoulli trial.
Define the hazard rate and use it to define probability functions for default time and conditional default probabilities.
Explain how a CDS spread can be used to derive a hazard rate curve.
Explain how the default distribution is affected by the sloping of the spread curve.
Define spread risk and its measurement using the mark-to-market and spread volatility.
Assess the effects of correlation on a credit portfolio and its Credit VaR.
Describe how a single factor model can be used to measure conditional default probabilities given economic health.
Compute the variance of the conditional default distribution and the conditional probability of default using a
single-factor model.
Explain the relationship between the default correlation among firms and their single-factor model beta
parameters. Apply this relationship to compute one parameter from the other.
Explain how Credit VaR of a portfolio is calculated using the single-factor model, and how correlation affects the
distribution of loss severity for intermediate values between 0 and 1.
40
Describe how Credit VaR can be calculated using a simulation of joint defaults with a copula.
Identify common types of structured products and the various dimensions that are important to their value
and structure.
Identify the key participants in a securitization, and describe some conflicts of interest that can arise in the process.
Evaluate one or two iterations of interim cashflows in a three tiered securitization structure including the final
cashflows to each tranche holder.
Describe a simulation approach to calculating credit losses for different tranches in a securitization of a portfolio
of loans.
Explain how the probability of default and default correlation among the underlying assets of a securitization
affects the value, losses and Credit VaR of equity, junior, and senior tranches.
Define and describe how default sensitivities for tranches are measured.
Define and describe how default sensitivities for tranches are measured.
Summarize some of the different types of risks that play a role in structured products.
Jon Gregory, Counterparty Credit Risk: The New Challenge for Global Financial Markets
(West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2010).
Chapter 2 ................................Defining Counterparty Credit Risk
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define counterparty risk and explain how it differs from lending risk.
Define the following terminology related to counterparty risk: credit exposure, credit migration, recovery,
mark-to-market, replacement cost, asymmetric exposure, and potential future exposure.
Describe the drawbacks of relying on triple-A rated, too-big-to-fail institutions as a method of managing
Summarize how counterparty risk is quantified and briefly describe credit value adjustment (CVA).
Summarize how counterparty risk is hedged and explain important factors in assessing capital requirements for
counterparty risk.
counterparty risk.
Define the following metrics for credit exposure: expected mark-to-market, expected exposure, potential future
exposure, expected positive exposure, effective exposure, and maximum exposure.
41
Differentiate between a two-way and one-way agreement, and explain the purpose of an ISDA master agreement
and credit support annex (CSA).
Identify types of default-remote entities and describe problems associated with the assumption that they are in
fact default remote.
Describe netting and close-out procedures (including multilateral netting), explain their advantages and
disadvantages, and describe how they fit into the framework of the ISDA master agreement.
Describe the effectiveness of netting in reducing exposure based on correlation between contract mark-tomarket values.
Describe the following features of collateralization agreements: links to credit quality, margins and call frequency,
thresholds, minimum transfers, rounding, haircuts, interest, and rehypothecation.
Explain the following techniques used to quantify credit exposure: add-ons, semi-analytical methods, and Monte
Describe the Monte Carlo simulation technique for quantifying exposure, and explain the choice of risk hotspots
Carlo simulation.
on the exposure profile.
Identify typical exposure profiles for the following security types: loans, bonds, repos, swaps, FX, options, and
Explain how payment frequencies and exercise dates affect the exposure profiles of securities.
Explain the difference between risk-neutral and real probability measures in the context of how they are used in
credit derivatives.
Describe the parameters used in simple single-factor models of the following security types: equities, FX,
commodities, credit spreads, and interest rates.
Define and calculate marginal expected exposure and the effect of correlation on total exposure.
Calculate the expected exposure and potential future exposure over the remargining period given normal
distribution assumptions.
Identify the impact that each factor of collateral modeling has on the exposure profile, starting from a simple
case of full collateralization.
42
Explain the relevant risks involved as a result of entering into a collateral agreement.
Define and calculate credit value adjustment (CVA) when no wrong-way risk is present.
Define and calculate the incremental CVA and the marginal CVA.
Explain challenges in pricing CVA arising from the presence of exotic products and the issue of path dependency.
Define and calculate CVA and CVA spread in the presence of a bilateral contract.
Ren Stulz, Risk Management & Derivatives (Florence, KY: Thomson South-Western, 2002).
Chapter 18 ...............................Credit Risks and Credit Derivatives
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain the relationship of credit spreads, time to maturity, and interest rates.
Explain the differences between valuing senior and subordinated debt using a contingent claim approach.
Explain, from a contingent claim perspective, the impact stochastic interest rates have on the valuation of risky
bonds, equity, and the risk of default.
Describe the fundamental differences between CreditRisk+, CreditMetrics and KMV credit portfolio models.
Define and describe a credit derivative, credit default swap, and total return swap.
Define a vulnerable option, and explain how credit risk can be incorporated in determining the options value.
43
Economic capital
Data sufficiency
Stress testing
Michel Crouhy, Dan Galai and Robert Mark, Risk Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001).
42.
Range of Practices and Issues in Economic Capital Frameworks, (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
Publication, March 2009).
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
43.
44.
44
45.
Brian Nocco and Ren Stulz, Enterprise Risk Management: Theory and Practice, Journal of Applied Corporate
Finance 18, No. 4 (2006): 820.
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
46.
Mo Chaudhury, A Review of the Key Issues in Operational Risk Capital Modeling, The Journal of Operational Risk,
Volume 5/Number 3, Fall 2010: pp. 37-66.
47.
Eric Cope, Giulio Mignola, Gianluca Antonini and Roberto Ugoccioni, Challenges and Pitfalls in Measuring
Operational Risk from Loss Data, The Journal of Operational Risk, Volume 4/Number 4, Winter 2009/10: pp. 3-27.
48.
Darrell Duffie, 2010. Failure Mechanics of Dealer Banks, Journal of Economic Perspectives 24:1, 51-72.
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
49.
Principles for the Sound Management of Operational Risk, (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
Publication, June 2011).
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
50.
Observations on Developments in Risk Appetite Frameworks and IT Infrastructure, Senior Supervisors Group,
December 2010.
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
51.
AIMS:
Michel Crouhy, Dan Galai and Robert Mark, Risk Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001).
Chapter 14...............................Capital Allocation and Performance Measurement
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the RAROC (risk-adjusted return on capital) methodology and describe some of the potential benefits
of its use.
Compute and interpret the RAROC for a loan or loan portfolio, and use RAROC to compare business unit
performance.
Calculate the capital charge for market risk and credit risk.
Describe the Loan Equivalent Approach and use it to calculate RAROC capital.
Explain how the second-generation RAROC approaches improve economic capital allocation decisions.
45
Range of Practices and Issues in Economic Capital Frameworks, (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
Publication, March 2009).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Within the economic capital implementation framework describe the challenges that appear in:
Risk aggregation
Validation of models
Describe the BIS recommendations that supervisors should consider to make effective use of risk measures not
Describe the constraints imposed and the opportunities offered by economic capital within the following areas:
Management incentives
Describe and calculate LVaR using the Constant Spread approach and the Exogenous Spread approach.
Explain the relationship between liquidation strategies, transaction costs and market price impact.
Describe liquidity at risk (LaR) and describe the factors that affect future cash flows.
Explain the role of liquidity in crisis situations and describe approaches to estimating crisis liquidity risk.
46
Describe methods for estimating model risk, given an unknown component from a financial model.
Identify challenges related to mapping of risk factors to positions in making VaR calculations.
Explain how improper mapping can understate specific risks such as basis or liquidity risk.
Identify reasons for the failure of the long-equity tranche, short-mezzanine credit trade in 2005 and describe how
such modeling errors could have been avoided.
Identify the two major defects in model assumptions which led to the underestimation of systematic risk for
residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) during the 2008-2009 financial downturn.
Define and differentiate between sources of liquidity risk, including transactions liquidity risk, balance sheet/
funding liquidity risk and systemic risk.
Summarize the process by which a fractional-reserve bank engages in asset liability management.
Describe issues related to systematic funding liquidity risk with respect to LBOs, merger arbitrage hedge funds,
and convertible arbitrage hedge funds.
Describe the economics of the collateral market and explain the mechanics of the following transactions using
collateral: margin lending, repos, securities lending, and total return swaps.
Calculate a firms leverage ratio, describe the formula for the leverage effect, and explain the relationship between
leverage and a firms return on equity.
Compute a firms leverage and construct a firms balance sheet given the following types of transactions:
purchasing long equity positions on margin, entering into short sales, and trading in derivatives.
Calculate the expected transactions cost and the 99 percent spread risk factor for a transaction.
Calculate the liquidity-adjusted VaR for a position to be liquidated over a number of trading days.
Define characteristics used to measure market liquidity, including tightness, depth and resiliency.
Explain the challenges posed by liquidity constraints on hedge funds during times of financial distress, with an
emphasis on handling redemptions.
47
Brian Nocco and Ren Stulz, Enterprise Risk Management: Theory and Practice, Journal of Applied Corporate
Finance 18, No. 4 (2006): 820.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain how implementing ERM practices and policies create shareholder value both at the macro and the
micro level.
Explain how an ERM program can be used to determine the right amount of risk.
Explain the use of economic capital in the corporate decision making process.
Mo Chaudhury, A Review of the Key Issues in Operational Risk Capital Modeling, The Journal of Operational Risk,
Volume 5/Number 3, Fall 2010: pp. 37-66.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Identify issues related to external and internal operational loss data sets.
Explain how frequency and severity distributions of operational losses are obtained.
Describe how a loss distribution is obtained from frequency and severity distributions.
Explain how operational losses are aggregated across various types using dependence modeling.
Eric Cope, Giulio Mignola, Gianluca Antonini and Roberto Ugoccioni, Challenges and Pitfalls in Measuring
Operational Risk from Loss Data, The Journal of Operational Risk, Volume 4/Number 4, Winter 2009/10: pp. 3-27.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Darrell Duffie, 2010. Failure Mechanics of Dealer Banks. Journal of Economic Perspectives 24:1, 51-72.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the major functions of large dealer banks and explain the firm-specific and systemic risk factors
attendant to each.
Describe the structure of the major markets in which large dealer banks operate.
Explain how diseconomies of scope in risk management and corporate governance may arise in large dealer banks.
Identify factors that can precipitate or accelerate a liquidity crisis at a dealer bank and what prudent risk
management steps can be taken to mitigate these risks.
Describe policy measures that could alleviate some of the firm-specific and systemic risks related to large
dealer banks.
48
Principles for the Sound Management of Operational Risk, (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
Publication, June 2011).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the three lines of defense in the Basel model for operational risk governance.
Define and describe the corporate operational risk function (CORF) and compare and contrast the structure and
responsibilities of the CORF at smaller and larger banks.
Summarize the eleven fundamental principles of operational risk management as suggested by the Basel
committee.
Evaluate the role of the Board of Directors as well as senior management in implementing an effective operational
risk structure per the Basel committee recommendations.
Describe the elements of a framework for operational risk management, including documentation requirements.
Identify examples of tools which can be used to identify and assess operational risk.
Describe features of an effective control environment and identify specific controls which should be in place to
address operational risk.
Evaluate the Basel committees suggestions for managing technology risk and outsourcing risk.
Observations on Developments in Risk Appetite Frameworks and IT Infrastructure, Senior Supervisors Group,
December 2010.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the concept of a risk appetite framework (RAF), identify the elements of a RAF and explain the benefits
Describe best practices for a firms Chief Risk Officer (CRO), Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Board of Directors
Explain the role of a RAF in managing the risk of individual business lines within a firm.
Identify metrics which can be monitored as part of an effective RAF and describe the classes of metrics to be
communicated to various managers within the firm.
Explain the benefits to a firm from having a robust risk data infrastructure, and describe key elements of an
Explain the challenges and best practices related to data aggregation at an organization.
Explain the differences in the features and scope of stress tests before and after the Supervisory Capital
Assessment Program (SCAP).
Describe the problem of coherence in modeling risk factors during the stress testing of banks.
Describe the challenges in mapping from broader macroeconomic factors to specific intermediate risk factors
in modeling losses.
Explain the challenges in modeling a bank's balance sheet over a stress test horizon period.
Compare and contrast the 2009 SCAP stress test, the 2011 and 2012 CCAR, and the 2011 EBA Irish and EBA
European stress tests in their methodologies and key findings.
49
Basel II: International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards: A Revised Framework
Comprehensive Version, (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision Publication, June 2006).
53.
Basel III: A Global Regulatory Framework for More Resilient Banks and Banking SystemsRevised Version,
(Basel Committee on Banking Supervision Publication, June 2011).
54.
Basel III: International Framework for Liquidity Risk Measurement, Standards and Monitoring, (Basel Committee
on Banking Supervision Publication, December 2010).
55.
Revisions to the Basel II Market Risk FrameworkUpdated as of 31 December 2010, (Basel Committee on
Banking Supervision Publication, February 2011).
56.
Operational RiskSupervisory Guidelines for the Advanced Measurement Approaches, (Basel Committee on
Banking Supervision Publication, June 2011).
57.
Nadine Gatzert, Hannah Wesker, A Comparative Assessment of Basel II/III and Solvency II, Working Paper,
Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Version: October 2011.
AIMS:
Basel II: International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards: A Revised Framework
Comprehensive Version, (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision Publication, June 2006).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Supervisory review
Market discipline
Describe the type of institutions that the Basel II Accord will be applied to.
Describe and contrast the major elements of the three options available for the calculation of credit risk:
Standardised Approach
Describe and contrast the major elements of the three options available for the calculation of operational risk:
Standardised Approach
* All readings in this section are freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
50
Describe and contrast the major elementsincluding a description of the risks coveredof the two options
available for the calculation of market risk:
Capital ratio
Capital charge
Maturity (M)
Stress tests
Concentration risk
Residual risk
Basel III: A Global Regulatory Framework for More Resilient Banks and Banking SystemsRevised Version,
(Basel Committee on Banking Supervision Publication, June 2011).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe reasons for the changes implemented through the Basel III framework.
The measurement, treatment, and calculation of Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 capital
Risk coverage, the use of stress tests, the treatment of counter-party risk with credit valuations adjustments
the use of external ratings, and the use of leverage ratios
Explain changes designed to dampen the procyclical amplification of financial shocks and to promote
countercyclical buffers.
Describe changes intended to improve the management of liquidity risk including liquidity coverage ratios, net
stable funding ratios, and the use of monitoring metrics.
Basel III: International Framework for Liquidity Risk Measurement, Standards and Monitoring, (Basel Committee
on Banking Supervision Publication, December 2010).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define and describe practical applications of prescribed liquidity monitoring tools, including:
Concentration of funding
51
Revisions to the Basel II Market Risk FrameworkUpdated as of 31 December 2010, (Basel Committee on
Banking Supervision Publication, February 2011).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the objectives for revising the Basel II market risk framework.
Define the capital charge for specific risk and general market risk.
Explain the relationship regulators require between market risk factors used for pricing versus those used for
calculating Value-at-Risk and the risks captured by the Value-at-Risk model.
Explain and calculate the stressed Value-at-Risk measure and the frequency which it must be calculated.
Describe the qualitative disclosures for the incremental risk capital charge.
Describe the quantitative disclosures for trading portfolios under the internal models approach.
Operational RiskSupervisory Guidelines for the Advanced Measurement Approaches, (Basel Committee on
Banking Supervision Publication, June 2011).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define gross loss and net loss and identify which specific items should be included or excluded in gross loss
computations per the Basel committee.
Describe the process and considerations suggested by the Basel committee for a bank to use in determining a
Describe the four data elements which are required to compute a banks operational risk capital charge per the
Define an operational risk management framework (ORMF) and an operational risk measurement system (ORMS)
and explain the relationship between a banks ORMF and its ORMS.
Describe key guidelines for verification and validation of a banks ORMF and ORMS.
Describe key supervisory guidelines for the selection of a reference date for an internal loss.
Describe key guidelines for the selection of a banks Operational Risk Categories (ORCs).
Explain key guidelines for modeling the distribution of individual ORCs, including the selection of thresholds,
necessary adjustments, and selection of statistical tools and probability distributions.
Nadine Gatzert, Hannah Wesker, A Comparative Assessment of Basel II/III and Solvency II, Working Paper,
Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Version: October 2011.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Contrast the use of VaR parameters and confidence intervals in the Basel II/III and the Solvency II frameworks.
Explain the difference between classes of risks taken into account in Basel II/III and Solvency II.
Differentiate between solvency capital requirements (SCR) and minimum capital requirements (MCR), and describe
the repercussions to an insurance company for breaching the SCR and MCR under the Solvency II framework.
Explain the difference between the Basel II/III and the Solvency II frameworks for the capture of diversification
Explain the difference between Basel II/III and the Solvency II frameworks with respect to: 1) risk classes and
benefits.
capital requirements, 2) risk measure and calibration, 3) time perspective, and 4) valuation.
Compare and contrast the Basel II/III and Solvency II frameworks with respect to qualitative risk management
aspects, including the internal risk management process, governance, and supervision.
52
Describe the key differences between Basel II/III and Solvency II with respect to public disclosure.
Portfolio construction
Risk budgeting
Hedge funds
Liquidity
Private equity
Richard Grinold and Ronald Kahn, Active Portfolio Management: A Quantitative Approach for Producing Superior
Returns and Controlling Risk, 2nd Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000).
59.
60.
Jorion, Value-at-Risk: The New Benchmark for Managing Financial Risk, 3rd Edition.
Robert Litterman and the Quantitative Resources Group, Modern Investment Management: An Equilibrium
Approach (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
61.
62.
63.
Zvi Bodie, Alex Kane, and Alan J. Marcus, Investments, 9th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010).
David P. Stowell, An Introduction to Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, and Private Equity (Academic Press, 2010).
G. Constantinides, M. Harris and R. Stulz. Ed., Handbook of the Economics of Finance, Volume 2B
(Oxford: Elsevier, 2013).
53
64.
Andrew W. Lo, Risk Management for Hedge Funds: Introduction and Overview, Financial Analysts Journal,
Vol. 57, No. 6 (Nov to Dec, 2001), pp. 16-33.
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
65.
Stephen Brown, William Goetzmann, Bing Liang, Christopher Schwarz, Trust and Delegation, May 28, 2010.
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
66.
Greg N. Gregoriou and Franois-Serge Lhabitant, Madoff: A Riot of Red Flags, December, 2008.
Freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
AIMS:
Richard Grinold and Ronald Kahn, Active Portfolio Management: A Quantitative Approach for Producing Superior
Returns and Controlling Risk, 2nd Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000).
Chapter 14...............................Portfolio Construction
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the motivation and methods for refining alphas in the implementation process.
Explain practical issues in portfolio construction such as determination of risk aversion, incorporation of specific
Describe portfolio revisions and rebalancing and the tradeoffs between alpha, risk, transaction costs and
Describe the optimal no-trade region for rebalancing with transaction costs.
Describe the following portfolio construction techniques, including strengths and weaknesses:
Screens
Stratification
Linear programming
Quadratic programming
Describe dispersion, explain its causes and describe methods for controlling forms of dispersion.
Jorion, Value-at-Risk: The New Benchmark for Managing Financial Risk, 3rd Edition.
Chapter 7 ................................Portfolio Risk: Analytical Methods
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define and distinguish between individual VaR, incremental VaR and diversified portfolio VaR.
Define, compute, and explain the uses of marginal VaR, incremental VaR, and component VaR.
Describe the challenges associated with VaR measurement as portfolio size increases.
Demonstrate how one can use marginal VaR to guide decisions about portfolio VaR.
Explain the difference between risk management and portfolio management, and demonstrate how to use
marginal VaR in portfolio management.
54
Describe the impact of horizon, turnover and leverage on the risk management process in the investment
management industry.
Define and describe the following types of risk: absolute risk, relative risk, policy-mix risk, active management
Describe how VaR can be used to check compliance, monitor risk budgets and reverse engineer sources of risk.
Explain how VaR can be used in the investment process and development of investment guidelines.
Describe the risk budgeting process across asset classes and active managers.
Robert Litterman and the Quantitative Resources Group, Modern Investment Management: An Equilibrium
Approach (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
Chapter 17 ...............................Risk Monitoring and Performance Measurement
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Define, compare and contrast VaR and tracking error as risk measures.
Describe how risk monitoring confirms that investment activities are consistent with expectations.
Zvi Bodie, Alex Kane, and Alan J. Marcus, Investments, 9th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010).
Chapter 13 ...............................Empirical Evidence on Security Returns
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Interpret the expected return-beta relationship implied in the CAPM, and describe the methodologies for
estimating the security characteristic line and the security market line from a proper dataset.
Describe the two-stage procedure employed in early tests of the CAPM and explain the concerns related to these
early test results.
Describe and interpret Rolls critique to the CAPM, as well as expansions of Rolls critique.
Describe the methodologies for correcting measurement error in beta, and explain historical test results of these
methodologies.
Explain the test of the single-index models that accounts for human capital, cyclical variations and nontraded
business.
Describe and interpret the Fama-French three-factor model, and explain historical test results related to this model.
Summarize different models used to measure the impact of liquidity on asset pricing and asset returns.
Explain the equity premium puzzle and describe the different explanations to this observation.
55
Differentiate between the time-weighted and dollar-weighted returns of a portfolio and their appropriate uses.
Describe the different risk-adjusted performance measures, such as Sharpes measure, Treynors measure,
Describe the uses for the Modigliani-squared and Treynors measure in comparing two portfolios, and the
Describe the statistical significance of a performance measure using standard error and the t-statistic.
Explain how portfolios with dynamic risk levels can affect the use of the Sharpe ratio to measure performance.
Describe techniques to measure the market timing ability of fund managers with a regression and with a call
option model.
David P. Stowell, An Introduction to Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, and Private Equity (Academic Press, 2010).
Chapter 11................................Overview of Hedge Funds
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the common characteristics attributed to hedge funds, and how they differentiate from standard
Describe how hedge funds grew in popularity and their sub-sequent slowdown in 2008.
Explain the fee structure for hedge funds, and the use of high-water marks and hurdle rates.
mutual funds.
Describe the liquidity of hedge fund investments and the usage of lock-ups, gates and side pockets.
Describe funds of funds and provide arguments for and against using them as an investment vehicle.
Describe equity-based strategies of hedge funds and their associated execution mechanics, return sources
and costs.
Summarize how macro strategies are used to generate returns by hedge funds.
Explain the common arbitrage strategies of hedge funds, including fixed-income-based arbitrage, convertible
arbitrage and relative value arbitrage.
Describe event-driven strategies, including activism, merger arbitrage and distressed securities.
Explain the mechanics involved in event-driven arbitrage, including their upside benefits and downside risks.
Describe and interpret a numerical example of the following strategies: merger arbitrage, pairs trading, distressed
investing and global macro strategy.
56
Describe and differentiate between major types of private equity investment activities.
Describe the basic structure of a private equity fund and its sources and uses of cash.
Describe private equity funds of funds and the secondary markets for private equity.
Identify the key participants in a private equity transaction and the roles they play.
Identify issues related to the interaction between private equity firms and the management of target companies.
Describe the potential impact of private equity transactions, including leveraged recapitalizations, on
target companies.
G. Constantinides, M. Harris and R. Stulz. eds., Handbook of the Economics of Finance, Volume 2B
(Oxford: Elsevier, 2013).
Chapter 17 ...............................Hedge Funds, by William Fung and David Hsieh
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the characteristics of hedge funds and the hedge fund industry, and compare hedge funds with
mutual funds.
Explain the evolution of the hedge fund industry and describe landmark events which precipitated major changes
Describe the different hedge fund strategies, explain their return characteristics, and describe the inherent risks
Describe the historical performance trend of hedge funds compared to equity indices, and evaluate statistical
Describe the market events which resulted in a convergence of risk factors for different hedge fund strategies,
and explain the impact of such a convergence on portfolio diversification strategies.
Describe the problem of risk sharing asymmetry between principals and agents in the hedge fund industry.
Explain the impact of institutional investors on the hedge fund industry and assess reasons for the trend towards
growing concentration of assets under management (AUM) in the industry.
57
Andrew W. Lo, Risk Management for Hedge Funds: Introduction and Overview, Financial Analysts Journal,
Vol. 57., No. 6 (Nov to Dec, 2001), pp. 16-33.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Compare and contrast the investment perspectives between institutional investors and hedge fund managers.
Explain how proper risk management can itself be a source of alpha for a hedge fund.
Explain the limitations of the VaR measure in capturing the spectrum of hedge fund risks.
Explain how survivorship bias poses a challenge for hedge fund return analysis.
Describe how dynamic investment strategies complicate the risk measurement process for hedge funds.
Describe how the phase-locking phenomenon and nonlinearities in hedge fund returns can be incorporated into
risk models.
Explain how autocorrelation of returns can be used as a measure of liquidity of the asset.
Stephen Brown, William Goetzmann, Bing Liang, Christopher Schwarz, Trust and Delegation, May 28, 2010.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain the role of third party due diligence firms in the delegated investment decision-making process.
Explain how past regulatory and legal problems with hedge fund reporting relates to expected future
operational events.
Explain the role of the due diligence process in successfully identifying inadequate or failed internal process.
Greg N. Gregoriou and Franois-Serge Lhabitant, Madoff: A Riot of Red Flags, December, 2008.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
58
Describe Bernard Madoff Investment Securities (BMIS) and its business lines.
Describe the operational red flags at BMIS conflicting with the investment professions standard practices.
Describe investment red flags that demonstrated inconsistencies in BMIS investment style.
Sovereign risk
Jaime Caruana and Stefan Avdjiev, Sovereign Creditworthiness and Financial Stability: An International
Perspective. Banque de France Financial Stability Review, No. 16 (April 2012), pp. 71-85.
68.
Li Lian Ong and Martin ihk, Of Runes and Sagas: Perspectives on Liquidity Stress Testing Using an Iceland
Example. IMF Working Paper WP/10/156, July 2010.
69.
Andrew G. Haldane and Benjamin Nelson, Tails of the Unexpected. Speech from The Credit Crisis Five Years On:
Unpacking the Crisis Conference at the University of Edinburgh (Bank of England, June 8 2012).
70.
Andrew G. Haldane and Vasileios Madouros, The Dog and the Frisbee. Speech from the Federal Reserve Bank of
Kansas Citys 36th Economic Policy Symposium (Bank of England, August 31 2012).
71.
Gerald Rosenfield, Jay Lorsch, Rakesh Khurana (eds.), Challenges to Business in the Twenty-First Century, (Cambridge:
American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2011), Chapter 2, Challenges of Financial Innovation, by Myron S. Scholes.
72.
Ananth Madhavan, Exchange-Traded Funds, Market Structure and the Flash Crash, October 2011.
* All readings in this section are freely available on the GARP Digital Library.
59
AIMS:
Jaime Caruana and Stefan Avdjiev, Sovereign Creditworthiness and Financial Stability: An International
Perspective. Banque de France Financial Stability Review, No. 16 (April 2012), pp. 71-85.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Explain three key initial conditions that helped spread of the economic crisis globally among sovereigns.
Describe three ways in which the financial sector risks are transmitted to sovereigns.
Describe five ways in which sovereign risks are transmitted to the financial sector.
Summarize the activity of banks and sovereigns in the European Union during the 2002-2007 period leading up
Summarize the activity of banks and sovereigns in the European Union during the economic crisis.
Describe how risks were transmitted among banks and sovereigns in the European Union during the economic
Describe the economic condition of the European financial sector in 2012, and explain some possible policy
implementation that can help mitigate the spread of future crises.
Li Lian Ong and Martin ihk, Of Runes and Sagas: Perspectives on Liquidity Stress Testing Using an Iceland
Example. IMF Working Paper WP/10/156, July 2010.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the typical solvency and liquidity scenarios present at Icelandic banks in the periods leading up to the
Icelandic debt crisis.
Explain how the weighting of shocks in short-term assets and short-term liabilities are adjusted in stress tests
that account for a liquidity crisis.
Contrast the stress test methods of the Financial Supervisory Authority (FME) and Sedlabanki, and compare their
results to the resultant funding gap at Sedlabanki from the actual shocks.
Andrew G. Haldane and Benjamin Nelson, Tails of the Unexpected. Speech from The Credit Crisis Five Years On:
Unpacking the Crisis Conference at the University of Edinburgh (Bank of England, June 8 2012.)
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
60
Describe the evidence of fat tails, the implications of fat tails, and explanations for fat tails.
Andrew G. Haldane and Vasileios Madouros, The Dog and the Frisbee. Speech from the Federal Reserve Bank of
Kansas Citys 36th Economic Policy Symposium (Bank of England, August 31 2012).
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe heuristics and explain why using heuristic rules can be an optimal response to a complex environment.
Describe the advantages and disadvantages of using simple versus complex rules in a decision making process.
Describe ideal conditions and situations where simple decision making strategies can outperform complex rule sets.
Summarize the evolution of regulatory structures and regulatory responses to financial crises, and explain
criticisms of the level of complexity in current regulatory structures.
Compare the effectiveness of simple and complex capital weighting structures in predicting bank failure given
smaller and larger sample sizes, and explain the results of the study of FDIC-insured banks.
Compare the results provided by simple and complex statistical models in estimating asset returns and portfolio
Gerald Rosenfield, Jay Lorsch, Rakesh Khurana (eds.), Challenges to Business in the Twenty-First Century,
(Cambridge: American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2011), Chapter 2, Challenges of Financial Innovation, by
Myron S. Scholes.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe how accounting systems and protocols can affect how risk is presented.
Describe the use of hedging versus raising equity capital as it relates to managing risk.
Ananth Madhavan, Exchange-Traded Funds, Market Structure and the Flash Crash, October 2011.
Candidates, after completing this reading, should be able to:
Describe the chronology of the Flash Crash and the possible triggers for this event discussed in recent research.
Describe the data set, measurements, flags, and multiple regression models used in the study.
Calculate the maximum drawdown, concentration ratio, and the volume and quote Herfindahl index.
Summarize the results of the study including the descriptive statistics, the time series variation in fragmentation,
and the determinants of fragmentation and drawdown.
61
NOTES
62
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